


The Way That Cocksleeves Ride

by AnonymousHeavyIndustries



Series: Memos from the Yamazaki Brand Inspection Agency [1]
Category: Free!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Western, Anal, BDSM, Begging, Blow Jobs, Crying, Daddy Kink, Dirty Talk, M/M, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm Control, Overstimulation, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-05 20:58:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21214988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnonymousHeavyIndustries/pseuds/AnonymousHeavyIndustries
Summary: Just one.Sousuke is pent up, bent out of shape, and tired. Tobacco withdrawal is a mean bitch—but Natsuya is more than willing to help occupy his mind.





	The Way That Cocksleeves Ride

"Just one."

Sousuke gritted his teeth, refusing to look at the cigarillo flaking tobacco onto the stinking buffalo-hide blanket. "No."

"You said you wasn't quitting, only cutting back."

"I'm cutting back, so I'm not gonna have one right now."

"We finished the job. You earned it."

"Don't even," he started, then left it there.

As of late, Inspector Sousuke Yamazaki had been having difficulties of breath after hard rides, and, on the recommendation of Dr Ryuugazaki, had reduced his smoking habit to one pipe on Sundays and anything else only if offered by another—so long as that other wasn't Natsuya. The man acted as if he would drop dead tomorrow if he eased up and to be truthful, he felt the part. Nobody he knew had ever considered cutting back, doctor's orders or otherwise, so he had not known the sense of utter derangement that would ensue.

For three weeks now, they had been away from home, away from his pipe, which he would not chance carrying on the road, and every man he'd talked to was either out of tobacco themselves, too miserly to offer (and he would not resort to begging, not with his dying breath), or a devout servant of God willfully subjecting themselves to the hard, lightless life he now endured. Everything that would have been a minor irritant before seemed a rock in the eye now, worthy of nothing less than a blue storm, for a streak was too piddling, and without the layer of ash hardening his palate, he had developed a terrible awareness of the inferior quality of trail food, collapsing his only other den of solace. Investigative work proved equally unpalatable, adding further days to his pipe's absence as he leaned on Natsuya to compensate, who, to his begrudging credit, had navigated the case admirably. Shame he couldn't stop himself being a nuisance.

Natsuya offered the cigarillo again, the veneer of feigned concern cracking into a smile. "It'll cure what ails ya."

"Get that out my face before I cut your head off, you damned pissant drunk."

"Boy, you're sore as a squashed skunk, huh."

He tucked the cigarillo into the enameled case he'd gambled off some Dutchie two months back. Its lid featured a blonde woman in a tree coyly baring a naked ankle and irked Sousuke beyond measure. Damned silly for a manlover to keep a woman in his pocket. Perhaps it could be forgiven if he was of effete sensibilities, as some such men were, but Natsuya's heathenish character no more needed a feminine touch than a bulldog needed lace.

Sousuke laid out, bringing the stinking cover—buffalo always stank, no matter how many times you washed it—over his shoulder. The mattress was lumped and bumped so thoroughly as to resemble the back of a toad and permeated with the stench of spilled whiskey and things far fouler. Half the support slats were broke, rendering efforts to find an even spot as futile as setting a level on the sea. A dollar seventy-five, and this is what they gave him. A dollar seventy-five for a brokeback bed and a supper that had the look and taste of something dredged from a ditch, and that didn't even include the board for the horses—God help those horses! He half-expected to find them unshod, rebranded, and twisting on their backs from the colic in the morning. The audacity of that lazy-eyed stablehand to think of putting them on hot feed at this time of night, and full of pebbles at that! For every cracked tooth he found in his horse's head, he'd put one in the hand's in return.

The Quality Inn groaned with occupation and age, only just muffling domestic arguments, rabblerousing, transient shuffling, banging doors and barking dogs, the distant rumble of the night train passing. What sounded a passel of children had been crying from every corner of the place for the better part of the night. Downstairs, an amateur trumpeteer continued practicing scales against the threats of all residents and several prolonged door batterings; next door, the voice of the woman having a shrieking meltdown at her husband rose to infernal heights. Sousuke hooked up his boot and whipped it at the offending wall. The woman smashed her fist back in retort, telling him to mind his business, at which point he informed her that he was not averse to laying hands on a woman and described in most savage detail how he would dismember her and her man, which quieted them down quite nicely.

For a solid hour he laid twisting, turning. Nothing doing. Though he had made many hard discoveries these past few weeks, the most painful was that he slept badly with tobacco and not at all without. The longest stretch he had managed was two nightmare-plagued hours last night and what little relief he might have claimed was spoiled by Natsuya sticking those insufferable cigarillos in his face, telling him, _take a puff, take a puff,_ as though he were a babe seeking a teat, going so far as to light one, which he was sorely tempted to stub out in his accursed eyes, but settled for flinging it out the window. A subsequent attempt was made on his person that same night, in which he awoke from a five minute sojourn to a lit cigarillo jammed between his lips, which he disposed of in identical fashion. Natsuya swore up, down, and all around that Sousuke had done it himself. Natsuya then swore that he was well acquainted with the finer points of floor sleeping and that being put out of bed was no trouble.

Figuring that he might as well make the most of his time, Sousuke sat up and fished out the paper he picked up when they arrived in town. The first two pages were nothing but ads, always ads, ads and lies, why did he even bother. Examination of further pages proved impossible, as a steady pulse took up behind his eyes, hazing the text. He started shredding the paper into three-inch strips and dropped them into the lantern as the headache that had been encroaching all day began to sink in.

"You listening?" Natsuya whacked him on the thigh.

He hadn't realized he had said anything. Natsuya often staged various lines of inquiries to the ceiling and held impassioned, multisided arguments by himself should other participants be lacking. At this point, Sousuke regarded it as hardly more noise than the chirr of crickets. "What."

"Did your daddy use to play lap games with you when you was real little?"

In the five—or was it six?—years he'd known Natsuya, the only sensible conclusion that he could draw from these diversions was that there was no sense, he just wanted something and he wasn't going to let up til he got it. "I recollect one, though I can't rightly see why you want to know."

"Gotta get them tobacco devils off your mind somehow." Natsuya crawled out from beneath the covers and dropped into his lap.

"No."

"I won't bother you the rest of the trip."

He'd sooner believe the sky was green. "Yes you will."

"I wouldn't lie about something like that."

"You don't call it lying, you call it forgetting."

"Being forgetful's not a crime. Can't help it."

"Cutting back on the whiskey sure might."

"Everything's cutting back with you now. You'll be cutting your legs back next."

"No, I'll be cutting your head back next, if you don't get off my goddamn lap."

"I really won't bother you. I'll be good. And quiet."

Natsuya made himself small and tucked his nose into Sousuke's chin to nuzzle against him. Perhaps he would find it cuter if Natsuya were a wisp of a boy rather than a full-grown man, but as it stood, it mostly reminded him getting sat on by his father's bloodhound as a child, slobberiness included.

"I'll be good," Natsuya assured him.

No worse than feeding a fire, he supposed. Sousuke resituated him on his knee and joggled it in reminiscence of a gentle, mincing trot. "This is the way the lady rides, _clip clop clip clop clip clop_." He switched to a brisker, ambling gait. "This is the way the gentleman rides, _trip trop trip trop trip trop."_

"Never knew a gentleman to ride a horse with such a shoddy gait."

"Quit. This is the way the farmer rides—" Sousuke grabbed Natsuya by the waist, wrenched his bouncing knee one way and swung Natsuya the other. "_Hobbledehoy, hobbledehoy!_"

Natsuya was falling over himself laughing, clutching onto Sousuke's forearms as he whipped back and forth. "Again!"

Sousuke obliged. "You're a child in a grown man's body, I hope you realize."

"Good thing I got my Daddy taking care of me." He pressed Sousuke's hand to the warmth of his swollen cock.

Should've figured. "Not in the mood to be working you over."

"Work nothing." Natsuya pushed him flat on the stinking, brokeback bed and started tugging down his trousers. "I take care of my Daddy too."

There was no fighting it. Most days Natsuya didn't care what kind of attention he got, so long as there was some. Turn a cheek to refuse a kiss and he'd take that cheek with pleasure. But as always, when a job finished, the plying started. Elbowing, cajoling, under-table fondling, incessant kissing and canoodling at bedtime til Sousuke had to punch him in the head to get him to stop. He stayed on him like a smoking jacket and had all the subtlety of a mare in heat, albeit with the decency to not piss all over the floor whenever he saw him (at least not when they were away from home). Natsuya claimed he'd be less worse about it if Sousuke hadn't banned fucking on the job, but when they'd had no restraints, it invariably resulted in their bed putting in a full day's work and them none.

"Daddy," Natsuya slapped Sousuke's stomach. "Quit daydreaming."

This was a monster he'd made himself and he had learned to accept it.

"Hit me again and see what I do." Sousuke boxed his ear hard enough to smart, but not for long. "Spindly-legged whoreson. Don't get us kicked out."

"We've only gotten kicked out the once. You 'member? Back in '86."

"Yeah, I 'member', and I'm not doing it again."

There was nothing lower on his list of wants than reliving the experience of running from a bunch of drunken miners, gun belt in one hand, boots in the other, cock just a-swinging in the wind. This wasn't a no-name town that wouldn't bother reporting a couple of Sodomites to higher authorites; they would do jail here, or worse.

"You have no sense of adventure," Natsuya said, casting his clothes aside.

"Jail is not an adventure. Jail is the opposite of an adventure."

"I humbly disagree. I had a grand ol' time in Piedras Negras."

Natsuya rooted through their personal effects, fetched his oil flask, and took a cursory sniff of its contents, a habit he'd started after a drunken mishap in which he'd mistook it for his whiskey and ruined his digestive faculties for a solid day. Satisfied that it was the proper solution, he doused his hand liberally and pressed his oily fingers through his tight pucker, two first, then three. Sousuke turned up the lamp to better see the tanned, saddleworn ass work open. An inviting assy stink filled the air, mingling with the grit of hard travel and the innate tones of cooked meat and decaying leaves in Natsuya's musk intensified by weeks without a proper bath. Smell was one of the last things he ever considered about his lover. Hard to put it first when it was up against mile-long legs, that perpetually hungry hole that fit him like a glove, no matter how many times he'd fucked it, the big, hen's egg balls that sat snug to his cock and jigged like a Mick at a social when he violated said hole, but with his nose cleared of the stifling influence of smoke, he found it an intoxicating bouquet indeed. The sparse, wispy hairs encircling his boy's rectum were darkened and smoothed to his skin with oil, inviting him closer, closer, and without thinking, he grasped Natsuya's backside and pressed his tongue to the bruise-brown ring around it. Nimbly dodging the thrusting fingers, he rolled across its full circumference. Warm earthy sourness, salt, skin. Another circuit. Salt, skin. Another. Skin, soft, pliable skin. He pressed an eyetooth to the tender flesh and Natsuya shuddered, scrunching his toes up.

"Thought you was too tired to work."

"Don't sass me, boy." Sousuke flicked Natsuya's sack, smirking as his dusty, blackened feet contorted into points. "You know better."

Natsuya bowed his head, feet still flexing and fanning to ease the ache in his nuts. "Yessir. Sorry, sir."

Anticipation drowned Sousuke's headache. If there was ever anything to make him feel good, it was his boy pleasing him. He laid back, gripping his amply-sized cock in his hardened fist, and gave it a wag. "Suck me."

"Yessir."

Hand still pumping his grimy, fine-smelling ass, Natsuya bent and swallowed on him, slurping and lipsmacking his way down as if he was some long awaited treat to be savored. It was unwashed, sticky with fermented sweat and the little droplets of piss and cum and dirt and dead skin that inevitably clung to a man's piece, but Sousuke never bothered washing his cock anymore. His boy would do it for him. The tongue rooted out the crevices of his foreskin like Jesus Himself was coming to pay it a visit, pushing and scooping and swallowing until there was nothing to taste but raw skin, circling the rim of his cockhead til it tingled from cleanliness, then he sucked it into the hind of his cheek. There was a certain contrast between the hot, velveteen flesh and the unforgiving grooves of Natsuya's molars, one cracked from common saloon brawling, another from the riot that sprung him from the jail in Piedras Negras, that got him every time. Sousuke groaned, cock pushing out a trickle of pre that was mashed and sucked into the splits. He could cum like that any day of the week, had done it time and time again, but he wouldn't settle for that tonight. Natsuya owed him a piece for the trouble.

Sousuke twisted his cock from its cozy nook and aimed for the throat, scraping across the bony ridge in the roof of his mouth, battering the dangly pink bit behind his tongue, scouring and snagging his head on every crevice and rung that could be found. Natsuya retched, exposing his fat, wet tongue, then shifted his head so he went down smooth, and bobbed on him. Saliva swirled and frothed in his mouth, cascading down, getting sucked back up, cheeks pumping on his meat til they bulged taut as a drumskin.

"That's it, boy. Get it good and wet for you."

Natsuya moaned at that, fingers squelching harder against his hole. He pulled back and drooled down the shaft, spreading it with his reddened lips, smearing it across chin and cheeks. His lips puckered to spit, then remembered the beating he'd got for that last time and slackened, loosing a stream of whiskey-tinged spittle onto the cock. Sousuke mussed his curly, tobacco-brown hair in reward and permitted the unspoken request to lap on his balls. The boy went at it like a dog dying of thirst, testing their weight with the tip of his tongue, smushing his nose against them like he could sniff out how full they were, how much seed would be fucked into him this time. Sousuke pushed his face into them and held it there as if they were a mistake he needed to learn.

_Look at it, boy. Three weeks' worth. All for you._

Natsuya huffed them, peering up through those thick lashes of his. Prettiest Sousuke had ever seen, outside of horses. They softened him. Made idiots think he wasn't wild. That maybe he had some sense in his head. When he was cleaned up and dressed nice, you might even think he was the good, God-fearing type who said his pleases and thank yous and paid his debts on time, a man you could let your sister marry—not a rambling, belligerent, bill-dodging drunkard who lived to be hit on and spit on and loved slobbing on men's balls and getting his ass fucked out more than life itself. You couldn't find a sorrier, more depraved man in the whole country and he wouldn't have him any other way.

"Enough." Sousuke released him. "Gimmie that hole."

Natsuya scrambled to obey, leaving the spit-slicked nuts to cool as he lined himself up over the beastly, slimy piece. Sousuke steadied himself at the entrance and Natsuya sank onto him, eyes rolling white. He hovered there a moment, basking in it, ribcage strangely shadowed in the lantern's glow. A more impatient man would have gone straight to plugging and chugging, but Sousuke waited, stroking the wiry thighs he had so often striped with his quirt. He had developed an appreciation for these moments where the night kept its hand to its breast and the cards it held remained uncertain yet infinitely promising.

Natsuya rose in the same sluggish pace he'd descended, a crooked smile stretched across his cheeks, pausing when only the head remained inside so that Sousuke could feel his breath pulse around him. It was a tender pressure, like a boy's first kiss, of which Sousuke had grown quite fond. Then Natsuya slammed his hips down and squashed the moment. Woe, that his lover was a pervert who lacked an appreciation for fine things! (And that truthfully, he was near as bad.)

He went at it with quick, powerful pumps, the filthy wet smack of ass on cock smothered by another train passing. Guttural, unearthly noises exploded from his toned chest and were suppressed by a whistle that rattled the windows of neighboring establishments. Sousuke got in on it with a hearty growl of his own, knowing so long as that heavy _chukachuckachuck _of wheels rolled on, they could do as they pleased, how they pleased, and couldn't nobody stop them.

"Ride it, boy, ride that cock." He tugged the hair on Natsuya's pubic mound, earning a sharp yelp. "Gonna put my cum in you. Gonna put all my fuckin cum in you. Make you all sloppy. Fuckin nasty sloppy hole. And I'm gonna make you keep it like that. Gonna plug it up tight and make you ride the rest of the way home with your dirty nasty fucked out ass dripping cum all over that pretty custom saddle of yours and I'll make you clean it with your tongue. Now how do you like that?"

Natsuya made a noise as if he had been stabbed to his soul. He rolled his hips into the upstrokes, tightening the hold on his cock so that it stole his breath with each thrust, and Sousuke glimpsed the edge of the shiny pink scar burned into his rump. He'd came when he got it, harder than Sousuke had ever seen him before or since, shooting into the rancid, urine-soaked bedding of an empty horse stall, legs shaking at the hot bacon sizzle of his flesh as he wept with fierce pride that everyone would know who he belonged to. Sousuke traced the brand, pleased to see Natsuya's cock strain at the reminder.

"Maybe I'll keep you like that for good. Won't let you wear nothing but chaps and a belt." The notion got his cock fit to burst. "Keep your ass plugged up for me. Only take it out so you can shit and I can fuck you. I'll take you on investigations like that, boy. Let everyone see your dirty, bare naked ass full of my cum. I'll talk business with you on my lap, dripping all my cum down your stupid thighs. Gonna fingerfuck your ass, boy, scoop my cum out and feed you it while we're sipping whiskey, then I'll bust out that big fucking dick you love so much and fuck you in front of our client and put more cum in for you to eat later. I like that, boy. We're gonna make it happen."

Sousuke fucked up abruptly, jolting Natsuya out of his rhythm and starting his own, manhandling the brand as he pleased. This ass was **his**. His to fuck and spank and mark and breed as he saw fit. If he wanted to cut it up, he could. If he wanted to turn it out, he could. If he wanted to parade it down main street naked on all fours, he could. Anything he could think of, Natsuya was game for, because he was **his** and there was nothing, nothing finer in the world.

"Yours, yours—!" Natsuya garbled, mindreading. He hacked and choked on spit trying to keep his breath steady. "Fuck it in, Daddy, fuck that cum in. Wanna be your cum holster, want your cum in my hole—God Christ Almighty, fuck it in me!"

"Don't you cum before me."

Natsuya hung over him, bouncing on his cock, curls flickering in firelight, head bobbing in sluggish agreement. His eyes rattled in their sockets, looking feverish, delusional. It could not do anything but kindle that inextinguishable spot of meanness in a man's heart. Sousuke grabbed his plum-red cockhead and jerked it hard and fast. Natsuya yelped and started shooting messy, thick spurts across his fist. Belated, he tried to fend the hand off, shaking as his hole clamped down and milked for all it was worth. Sousuke arched his back, yanking down on his boy to bury himself deep as he could go. He had three weeks' worth of cum and he'd make damned sure he was getting every drop. He snapped up in a final brutal thrust, pisshole flaring wide. Cum splattered the deepest reaches, collapsing his sense of self to this point and nothing else, thinking only, _ take it, take it, boy, take it._

When cum ceased spraying his stomach and his own balls curtailed their siege, Sousuke allowed himself a few breaths of rest, then addressed the man gasping atop him. "I told you, didn't I? You weren't supposed to cum before me. You like cumming so much, I'll let you do it again."

He kept hold of Natsuya's cock, stroking even as it became as soft and helpless as a kitten, and watched his musucular thighs jump and quiver around him.

"Ah... Ah..." Drool poured from the corner of Natsuya's mouth, sliding down the ridges of his throat to congeal on his collarbone. "Q-Quit... It hurts."

"I know." On Natsuya's best days, his sensitivity was such that self-gratification was merely bearable and only then with a light hand. "Should've thought of that before you went and disobeyed me."

Natsuya dropped his head to the side and tried to bear it a while, squirming and mumbling, "Daddy, it hurts, it hurts," til his cock got hot and full again.

"Look at you. My cock ain't even hard yet and you're about to pop." He flicked the sore, swollen cockhead and the sob wrenched out of him was enough to get him back at full force. "You got your second chance. Keep your hand on your cock and don't you cum before me."

Natsuya tried, winced from his touch.

"Hands on your cock!" Sousuke forced his hand to it, squeezed it in place.

Natsuya lost it, kicking and crying, "I'm sorry, it hurts, I'm sorry!"

"I'll give you something to cry about." Sousuke whacked him so hard his teeth crashed together. "Never listen to a word I have to say. Making me get all riled up so I have to fuck your greedy little whore ass. Get over here, boy."

He dragged him to the edge of the bed and bent him over it, smashing his face into the mattress. Natsuya's feet skittered and slid across the rough-hewn floor as he rolled his head up to catch a precious breath, trying to stay true to the command and keep hold of his cock. Tears prickled in the corners of his eyes, spilled down his cheeks as Sousuke fucked in. Snot bubbled and sucked in his rawred nostrils, whistled pitifully between sobs. The second thrust killed his legs and he would've collapsed had Sousuke not shoved forward, forcing the mattress to take the brunt of the now dead weight writhing on his cock. He worked into a furious pace, rejoicing in the sound of a messy, cum-stuffed ass slapping against him.

"You gonna cum, boy? You gonna cum?"

"Yes!" Natsuya sobbed, fingers trembling on his prick.

"_No._" Sousuke corrected, smacking his nuts.

"Blease," he gurgled, "blease led me cum." He sucked in a deep, shivering breath, adding, "Please, Daddy, please."

What had been pleasant tightness moments ago strangled now. Flesh grinded against flesh, each thrust becoming a war in its own right. Sweat poured down Sousuke's face, pattering onto Natsuya's back as he tried jamming another inch of cock into him and only managing a centimeter. He yanked on Natsuya's hair, barking at him to loosen up, but he was too far gone to oblige. Cum shoved up against his cockhole ready to fly, driving him mad with need. Irate, he flexed his palm and beat that ass like it owed him money, grunting, _ "LET. GO. LET. GO."_ with every strike and Natsuya squeezed so hard he saw spots. He got tighter, tighter, blindingly tight—and tension collapsed and Sousuke glid forward and came.

Slapping turned to mindless approval, massaging those spots now vibrant red in the shape of his hand as he pumped him full of seed. Beneath him, he felt Natsuya give his cock a few weak strokes and shoot a pitiful trickle of cum onto the buffalo blanket. Sousuke ran his tongue over his cracked lips and held Natsuya still, letting the shots wane, then slowly pulled out his filthy cock and let it hang satisfied. Shudders wracked Natsuya's body as he went boneless and slack and refused to move. He cried as a child did, shamelessly thinking only of the comfort it gave him rather than the nuisance it would cause others. Sousuke thought briefly to their neighbors, who were sure to have heard this much, if not parts of the rest, and considered covering his mouth til he was tuckered out.

"Daddy... Daddy..." Natsuya whimpered, throat catching on a frog.

Sousuke rubbed his bruised hip, wishing he had packed liniment. "You're alright, boy. I'm here."

This was a noisy shithole anyway, who cared.

Once his hiccoughing subsided, Natsuya swiped his nose on his arm and coughed up the wad of phlegm that had been rattling around his chest the entire time. He shimmied back a hair, pointing his hips as he held his pink, fucked out hole open so that Sousuke could see the seed oozing out. He squeezed, forcing out bigger globs and coughed again and was alright.

They stretched their shaky legs, took turns pissing in the mess pot, checked Natsuya's watch to see that it was well past ten o'clock, and snuffed the lantern, not looking much at one another. Natsuya debated whether or not to bother putting clothes back on, deciding the latter was best, while Sousuke fiddled with the canvas sacking that covered the busted-out window, despite it not doing anything. The train had passed.

"Feelin' less ornery, old man?"

"I do believe so," Sousuke admitted, picking up his fuck-rag to wipe away his sweat. He scrubbed it in his pits, wiped down his chest and cock, then flung it to Natsuya, who wiped his face and hole and chucked it onto the floor. "Though I dispute your right to call me old since you were born before I was."

"Like you said, I'm young at heart. You was born a grandpa. A mean grandpa, too."

"I didn't say you were young, I said you were a child."

"Yeah, your child."

Natsuya insinuated himself under the blankets and kissed Sousuke full on the mouth before taking his side. The irregular stuffing and broken slats afforded a tendency to incline them towards the middle of the mattress, and after prolonged fumbling, they slotted together there, not minding each other's knees knocking against each other or the inevitable morning-time numbness in their arms and cricks in their necks and sticky, crunched up shoulders. Though faint, Sousuke could smell the flakes of tobacco scattered on the bed.

"We'll have us a smoke when we get home," he said.

"Cigarillos? Cheroot? Did ol' boy give you some torpedos? What're we smoking?"

There was no question about it, not really. He only asked because he wanted to fork his nerves and ensure he got a good, thorough whipping when they got home. There was no question that Sousuke would open that fine rosewood box he kept in his desk alongside the letters of their early days, when Natsuya remained in the service of his former keeper, and lift from its velvet confines a well-seasoned briar pipe—a gift to celebrate the opening of their office for which Sousuke had had no tangible response, though Natsuya claimed he would accept the mere pleasure of watching him smoke it (and some whiskey, if he would be so kind, fair is fair, _gordito_)—and trim from the plug of tobacco he pretended to have not seen slipped into his pocket when they stopped to restock in Crab Orchard. They would go to the porch to sit in their rockers and watch the dusk slip away, velveting the barley in fading orange, then blue; hear the peeping tree frogs, the cricket-katydid chirr; thinking nothing of tomorrow or the cases to come; pass the vesta case, strike the match, and smoke.

He could've kept any form of his tobacco habit, for he had tried them all, but he chose the pipe. He shouldn't have to tell him why. He should know.

"I'll smoke you if you don't hush up." He pinched Natsuya's thigh and watched him wriggle with pleasure. "Yep. Turn them curls of yours into filler. Sell 'em rolled for a penny. But you'd like that, wouldn't you?"

"I like just about anything you'll give me."

"Don't play cute."

"Ain't playin'. I just am."

The man would keep him up all night with this nonsense if he didn't put the brakes on it, so Sousuke kissed him on his stupid mouth and put the covers over his head. Natsuya slung them up over Sousuke's head in turn and plunged into a world of dark warmth made humid by their sweating bodies.

Scritching his toenails against the bony length of Sousuke's shin, Natsuya burrowed into the crusty, threadbare pillows. "Go to sleep, Daddy. I won't let no boogerman keep you 'wake."

Fighting impulse died on his tongue and gave way to a weary grunt. Sleep. Might be able to manage it. Though he had thought that many a time before, had sat on the precipice between worlds, thinking it would be soon now, it would come, yet never succumbing to that realm. The poison that crept along the edges of his mind, made quiet by daylight and emboldened by dark, entered in silence. It wound a tendril in, leafing through the pages of his history, ticking off his most shameful failures, underlining his shortcomings, his missed chances, couldawouldashouldas. An image surfaced and would not quit him: his throat, divided by his knife, cutting, cutting...

Sweaty fingers groped across his cheekbones and pressed his stinging eyelids closed with a quiet reminder that nobody liked a man who slept with his eyes open. There was devilry in it, and it gave him the creeps besides. Where the tips laid imparted faint streaks of light that persisted even when the hand had gone. The world carried on with its door banging and dog barking and rabblerousing, but not so loud as before. They seemed nothing against the steady rasp of the breath of the man beside him. His neck relaxed, just a touch, and he sank deeper into his pillow. A rough, oily-smelling hand settled on his hair, stroking, and refused to be banished in utter disregard of the grumbles issued in protest. This idiot only had to obey him and couldn't even manage that, smugly flouting the social order he had begged hands-and-knees for, subverting the authority he bestowed when he took that brand, forever riling and teasing and seeking every ounce of attention he could give, this juvenile, boot-licking suck-pint, he would get him back in the morning, he would...

**Author's Note:**

> A small respite from the posting void with yet more rarepair. While preparing the AO3 draft, I realized that this is the only explicit SouNatsu story on the site, so for all five people who care: You're welcome. Or unwelcome, depending on your tastes. In that case, it's up to you to do what must be done. Anything further I do with this couple is all downhill from here as far as tastefulness is concerned.
> 
> Criticism is not only welcome, but encouraged, and helps me create better content in the future. Thanks for reading.  
10 November 2019  
\- 匿名重工業


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